According to an article in the July issue of Scientific American, “When William Shakespeare took a breath, 280 molecules of every million entering his lungs were carbon dioxide. Each time you draw a breath today, 380 molecules per million are carbon dioxide. That portion climbs about two molecules every year.”

You’ve responded enthusiastically, to say the least, regarding the topic of global warming. It’s safe to say that most of you believe that the global warming issue is overblown, that humans cannot compete with nature in terms of carbon dioxide generation and, basically, that it’s arrogant of humans to believe that our actions could change the course of the planet. While I’ve often seemed (Admittedly, I am in some cases.) the liberal poster boy in this place, so far I’d have to agree with the previous ‘conservative’ positions.

The purpose of this article is neither to continue beating the globally-warmed horse, nor to infuriate some already-steamed readers. The aforementioned Scientific American article is an interesting one, however.

Let’s assume for a moment that excessive carbon dioxide is being generated, no one definitively knowing the causes: either mankind, or natural planetary and solar interactions.

Several readers took the healthy position, ‘Okay. There’s a problem. What do we do about it?’

The SA article looks at one approach: burying the carbon dioxide. Such programs focus not on cars (CO2 ‘recycling’ to the fueling station simply isn’t yet practical or economically feasible), for instance, but on fossil fuel-burning power plants, “…the source of one-quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.” Issues of nuclear power aside, such an approach seems reasonable. The article continues, “A new, large (1,000-megawatt-generating) coal-fired power plant produces six million tons of [carbon dioxide] annually (equivalent to the emissions of two million cars). The world’s total output (roughly equivalent to the output of 1,000 large plants) could double during the next few decades.” Of course, that’s globally.

According to the piece, all three (one of which is in development) types of coal-fired power plant systems can be modified for large-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage and, to keep this brief, inject these emissions into geologic formations for long-term storage, instead of releasing the gas to the atmosphere.

Not a brand-new process, the Energy Information Administration states, “As part of the February 2002 introduction of the Global Climate Change Initiative, President Bush announced that the U.S. Government will develop policies to encourage geologic sequestration, which the Initiative describes as ‘critical to long-term emission reductions.’ Federal support for sequestration technologies include $20 million for seven regional partnerships spanning 40 States to test potential capture technologies and storage reservoirs, creation of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum to encourage multilateral carbon sequestration projects, and the Integrated Sequestration and Hydrogen Research Initiative, FutureGen, which is a $1 billion government/industry partnership to design a “nearly emission-free” coal-fired plant to produce electricity and hydrogen.” The EIA describes two approaches: value-added, (with some of the related capture and storage costs mitigated by the sale of recovered oil or natural gas), and carbon dioxide reduction-only (no value-added element). “So far,” according to that EIA article at the time, “…one such large-scale geologic sequestration project has been implemented. In 1996, prompted by the Norwegian tax on carbon dioxide, the oil company Statoil began taking unwanted carbon dioxide from the Sleipner West field in the Norwegian North Sea and storing it 1,000 meters beneath the seabed in a saline aquifer reservoir.”

The article continues, “The main challenge to geologic storage of carbon dioxide is not the technical feasibility of injection and storage, but the economics of capturing carbon dioxide from a point source.”

Of course, it’s all about economics. (The material referenced above includes more specifics including an overview of costs.)

Is ‘burying’ carbon dioxide a viable solution? The administration thinks so. Scientific American thinks so, with certain caveats. “To be suitable, the sites typically would lie far below any source of drinking water, at least 800 meters under the surface.” Interestingly, while SA is not respected by such pundits as Crichton, the magazine does present an arguably balanced view. On one hand, the author says that “…commitments to capture and storage can reduce the risk of global warming.” On the other, he presents such related risks as gradual or sudden leakage of that stored or in-process carbon dioxide. (The article references the 1986 Lake Nyos disaster, during which a large volume of carbon dioxide ‘exploded’ [as part of a natural phenomenon] and asphyxiated 1,700 people in the area.)

While capture-and-storage seems as though it could be a solution, are we sure about the problem? Is geologic sequestration a good idea, or is fooling with Mother Nature yet again creating a host of new, potentially much more severe problems and risks?